The US economy, it seems, is on a firmer footing…but incomplete. So suggest the latest retail & manufacturing data – and Janet Yellen – respectively. What can this mean?

Could it mean that the Size 18 Yeti-shoe American debt trod on the jigsaw puzzle yet again and scattered those elusive missing pieces to everywhere from Arkansas to Zimmerman County?

Or more likely, is this the end of QE withdrawal, and in fact a long overdue acceptance by the Fed that – without permanent QE – the world’s largest economy is a walking-undead Zombie?

The one thing emanating from Yellen that suggested the latter might well be the case was her use of the phrase “continuing loose monetary policy for the foreseeable future”. This translates roughly into English as “Aaaaargh!”

Much waking up needs to go on here: QE has done little except manipulate stock markets upwards (for the benefit of the utterly unaccountable 3% of bonus-earners) and help suppress interest rates (to the detriment of the 28% of retired Western consumers living off their capital). In turn, it has allowed – especially in Britain – cynics like Osborne to tempt the young flies into the old spider’s larder with near-zero interest rates…the better to fare in the 2015 election.

Like many others, I strongly suspect this was always the intention, more or less.

Last night at The Slog: https://hat4uk.wordpress.com/2014/07/15/at-the-end-of-the-day-489/